What Level of Mercury Is Considered Toxic?

Why would an Arizona State Representative be posting about mercury and flu shots?

It’s easy to figure out once you look at the rest of her posts…

What Level of Mercury Is Considered Toxic?

We should start off by correcting a few things in Representative Kelly Townsend’s post.

The mercury in a thimerosal containing flu vaccine is ethylmercury, not methylmercury, the type that we might be exposed to in a can of tuna.

And mercury is only considered to be toxic if you are exposed in specific ways, at specific levels, and depending on the length of exposure.

“In case reports of accidental high-dose exposures in humans to thimerosal or ethylmercury toxicity was demonstrated only at exposures that were 100 or 1000 times that found in vaccines.”

FDA on Thimerosal in Vaccines Questions and Answers

Not only is the ethylmercury in vaccines not toxic, since only a small percentage of flu vaccines now contain thimerosal and you almost have to go out of your way to get a vaccine with thimerosal, you have to wonder why Representative Kelly Townsend is posting about it?!?

If she is really concerned about mercury toxicity, she should be sure that the EPA is truly doing everything they can to reduce mercury pollution and our exposure to mercury. She shouldn’t be scaring folks away from vacinating and protecting their kids.